Measles complication killed British girl a decade after infection

Rebecca Archer's daughter Renae was diagnosed with measles at five months old during a 2013 outbreak near Manchester. The infant received hospital treatment, was sent home with a drip, and appeared to recover after a week of isolation. Renae developed normally for the next decade and attended school without apparent problems.

Seizures continued and her behaviour changed. She required help with daily tasks, experienced hallucinations, and was repeatedly admitted to hospital. An MRI showed brain swelling that worsened over a week. Days before her death in September 2023, tests confirmed subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a rare fatal complication of measles that can appear seven to ten years after infection.

Vaccination rates and disease resurgence Britain has recorded a year-on-year decline in routine childhood immunisation uptake since the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization removed the country's measles elimination status because the virus is now spreading locally.

Consultant epidemiologist Vanessa Saliba of the UK Health Security Agency said most recent cases involve unvaccinated children under ten. She described measles as an indicator disease that returns when vaccination coverage falls. Australia has recorded its lowest measles vaccination coverage for children in a decade.

The federal government's Australian Immunisation Register shows under-vaccination clusters in northern New South Wales, the Gold Coast, parts of Western Australia, and pockets of Melbourne and Sydney. Professor Margie Danchin of Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital said coverage for several vaccine-preventable diseases has declined every year for the past five or six years.

Australia recorded 267 diphtheria cases this year and its first diphtheria death in nearly a decade last month.